"I thank God there are in Virginia no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have, for learning hath brought disobedience and heresy into the world." Some Virginia gentlemen did not agree with him, however, and gave money to try to establish free schools for poor children. A far greater hindrance to the establishment of schools than the governor's stupid opposition, was the fact that there was no town or village life in Virginia; the houses and plantations were scattered; previous to the year 1700 Jamestown was the only Virginia town, and it was but a petty settlement. Williamsburg was not even laid out; a few seaports had been planned, but had not been built. Hence the children of wealthy planters were taught by private tutors at home, or were sent to school in England. Occasionally, as years passed on, there might be found in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, what was called an old-field school, the uniting of a few neighbors to hire a teacher, too often a poor one, like the "hedge-teachers" of Europe, for a short term of teaching, in a shabby building placed on an old exhausted tobacco field. In one of these old-field schools kept by Hobby--sexton, pedagogue, and "the most conceited man in three parishes"--George Washington obtained most of his education. A daily ride on horseback for a year to a similar school ten miles away, and for another year a row morning and night even in roughest weather across the river to a Fredericksburg teacher, ended his school career when he was thirteen; but he had then made a big pile of neatly written manuscript school books, which may now be seen in the Library at Washington; and he had acquired a passionate longing to be educated, which accompanied him through life. An "advisive narrative" sent from America to the Bishop of London, toward the end of the seventeenth century, says:-- "This lack of schools in Virginia is a consequence of their scattered planting. It renders a very numerous generation of Christian's Children born in Virginia, who naturally are of beautiful and comely Persons, and generally of more ingenious Spirits than those in England, unserviceable for any great Employment in Church or State." [Illustration: Mary Lord, 1710 _circa_]